


Senseless

by heartswells



Series: Micro-Story Prompts [8]
Category: Hockey RPF, Men’s Hockey RPF
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Illness, Internalized stigma, M/M, Medication, Medication Withdrawl, Mental Illness, Prompt: Senseless, Psychiatric medication, Recovery, manic depression, stigma - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-17 08:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17556437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartswells/pseuds/heartswells
Summary: “I stopped taking my meds.”Mitch wanted the words to sound harsh and cruel. He wanted to sound powerful and spiteful. He wanted to scare them into leaving him alone with a vehemence that silenced them all. Instead, he sounded weak and distraught, words gasped between labored breaths. He sounded defeated. Maybe he was.





	1. Withdrawl (Noun): to cause deliberate pain.

**Author's Note:**

> content warning: vomiting & mentions of IV needles/hospitals

Mitch took one step onto the ice before the ground beneath him dematerialized, and he collapsed to his knees. He dry-heaved into his glove, gagging up the small handful of saliva and phlegm left in his body, and became consumed by a dangerous fluttering in his chest. The lights reflected off the ice in a searing blaze of white, and Mitch wondered if this was what dying was like: all bright and white and painful, a blinding descent to heaven tainted by the pain and terror of dying.

 

He wasn’t dying through; of that he was bitterly sure.

 

He dragged himself to sit against the boards and relished in the relief of the cold air licking away the sickly, sticky sweat that coated his skin. He lost himself in it, in the sweetest relief he’d felt in days, but his reverie was quickly shattered by the hideous scrape of skates approaching him, sending a long, terrible throb through his head.

 

“Mitch—”

 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Mitch mumbled, stumbling to his feet, suddenly shaken awake by the realization that he’d faded out for too long and Babs and Auston were hovering over him. He squeezed his eyes shut as his vision wavered with his movements, praying the world would recenter when he opened them. Just barely, it did.

 

“Really? You’re gonna try that?” Auston sounded sharp with incredulity. Babs sighed, but his hands were gentle as they carefully removed the glove he’d vomited in—the one with the smiley face drawn on.

 

“Come on, Marner, let’s get you off the ice,” Babs said, pulling him up. Mitch hadn’t noticed Matt had arrived until he felt his arm slip under his shoulder. He skated clumsily, relying on the tug of Matt’s strength like a child first learning to skate.

 

_God, he had fucked up._

 

A trainer led them to an examination room with lights so agonizingly bright that Mitch had to cover his eyes. He passed him a Gatorade; when, Mitch didn’t immediately drink it, Matt took it and cracked off the cap before handing it back, sending a pointed message.

 

Mitch drank hesitantly, knowing that his body would reject it. Each gulp tasted more dehydrating than hydrating. It was too thick and too sweet, and he immediately vomited it up in a mess of blue that mimicked the exact shade of his eyes.

 

“How long have you not been able to hold down fluid?” The trainer inquired.

 

“Monday, I think. I don’t know,” Mitch mumbled, leaning into the wall where sat. His body felt heavy and constricted, used up and dried out.

 

“ _Monday?_ It’s been over _36 hours?_ That can kill you.” The utter recklessness astonished Matt.

 

“You need an IV and blood paneling that can’t be done here,” the trainer said.

 

“What’s going on Mitch? Since Monday? Why haven’t you called anyone?” Matt asked.

 

“Mitch,” Matt warned when he didn’t reply.

 

“I stopped taking my meds.”

 

Mitch wanted the words to sound harsh and cruel. He wanted to sound powerful and spiteful. He wanted to scare them into leaving him alone with a vehemence that silenced them all. Instead, he sounded weak and distraught, words gasped between labored breaths. He sounded defeated. Maybe he was.

 

Matt sucked in a breath, and the sharp whoosh of the inhale echoed in Mitch’s ears like the last pulse of a heart before death. There was an emotion in Matt that Mitch felt too numb to name, but he felt it quivering in the air, and it scared him.

 

“I’m going to take him to the hospital,” the trainer said.

 

“I’ll pick him up later,” Matt answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>    
> I can’t count the number of times I’ve done this on my hand. This is reflective of the withdrawal effects of my medication combination (lamictal, luvox, depakote, & seroquil). No matter how you feel, it is always dangerous to go off medication. _Always._ After 24 hours of not being able to hold down fluids, go to the ER. Before you run out, most pharmacies will also provide emergency supplies.
> 
>  
> 
> This is hard to write. Hard to word. I thought I’d post this as two chapters to get my flow going. It will be finished.


	2. Swallow (verb): to accept and to gain.

“We need to talk, Mitch.”

 

Mitch knew it wasn’t possible, but he swore his blood was frozen, barely trickling through his veins. The ghost of the IV’s cold drip refused to leave, and the cold he felt was insatiable. It made his insides twist wildly and urged him to flee. Matt’s voice only made him feel colder.

 

Mitch focused on the bandaid in the crook of his arm for comfort. The tan, woven fabric was beginning to unravel and the edges had begun to curl up like a roach’s wings. He wished he could stick a bandaid over the entirety of today: cover it, hide it, and shove it out of Matt’s sight. Instead, Matt reached over and ripped the bandaid off, robbing Mitch of the distraction he’d been clinging to. It stung, and Mitch glanced up to glare, but Matt’s resolve was stronger, and Mitch could not rival the steel set of his face.

  


“Mitch, this isn’t an option. We have to talk. Why aren’t you taking your medication?” Matt’s voice was controlled and assertive, and Mitch hated how it so thoroughly demanded his respect.

 

“I don’t want them,” Mitch mumbled.

 

“That’s not going to cut it, Mitch. I want a real answer.” What was left of the corpse of Matt’s patience had melted off and was festering in its casket, and Matt begged himself for composure.

 

Anger is bred fiercest by fear, and Mitch had _terrified_ Matt. Matt feared nothing more than to see those he loved in pain, and to see Mitch so recklessly, unapologetically harm himself awakened a deep, seething fear in Matt’s bones, and it threatened to break loose as pure rage.

 

“I don’t _want_ to be bipolar,” Mitch finally spat.

 

“Mitch, what—”

 

“I said, I don’t want to be bipolar. I don’t want to take anymore fucking medication.” Mitch’s logic was nonexistent, borne purely of frustration. As if the medication was at fault for the existence of the disorder itself, he had abandoned it.

 

“That won’t make it go away, Mitch,” Matt countered in confusion.

 

“You don’t understand. I don’t get to know _who I am._ Manic? Depressed? Fucking anything? Where is the _me_ in there? Because everyone says I’m _this_ or _that._ Everyone just tells me I’m _bipolar_. ‘ _You’re bipolar, Mitch. That’s what bipolar people do. That’s how bipolar people feel.’_ Yeah, well, what the fuck part of me is human, and when do I get to matter?”

 

Matt flinched. Mitch was raw by nature, but to hear such unadulterated anger projected into this world was something few could bear to witness.

 

“I just want to be me. I want to stop. I want to feel like myself. I don’t know what to do. I feel so different. So wrong. I miss it so much, Matt. Everything was right before. _I felt right._ I was fine,” he sobbed. “I don’t understand why it has to change now.”

 

Bipolar disorder felt like damnation to displacement. It forced one to live in an irrecoverable dichotomy. He skated between two versions of himself, both of which he was told were not _real._ His existence had always been so intensely defined by the adrenaline of emotion, and to now be told his feelings were distorted and inauthentic robbed him of his identity. He was not reconcilable. The version of himself that was said to matter and be real was one he did not know.

 

“ _Healing,_ ” they said.

 

It felt like a lie.

 

Mitch was gasping for air, fingers twisting and tangling as he hysterically ripped at the dead skin by his cuticles. His eyes turned to mouths, and they screamed rather than saw. He was on the verge of crashing to the ground and splintering to shards.

 

Matt reached out, cupping Mitch’s face in his palms to shield him from the world. He felt so delicate and angelic, and Matt wished Mitch could have a taste of the magic he knew Mitch was and see what his beauty really was. Matt kissed away his tears, and then wiped away some of the snot from Mitch crying on his thumb. Mitch winced in embarrassment, and Matt snorted. Every part of Mitch, _his Mitchy,_  he loved.

 

“Mitch, we can all see that you’re hurting,” Matt validated, extending his strength and love.

 

“We knew you before medication, and we know you after. These things you miss… you don’t remember them the same way we do. The drinking, the laughing, the disappearing, the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the hysteria—all these highs and lows _scared_ us. We were afraid to leave you alone, Mitch. You remember in dreams, but we remember in memories.”

 

Mitch had heard it said time after time again, in hospitals, in offices, and in groups. It was different this time though. It was not an echo off white walls but a desperate confession from a friend, and that _hurt._

 

Memories are not actualities. The life he lived before was a life lost on idealization. It is so easy to forget the low when you ride the high so intensely, but harsher and truer is the idea that there isn’t a high at all. There is chaos, and there is desperation, but there is no soaring. The things he _thinks_ are not the things other people _know._

 

“We need you to trust us,” Matt said. He held Mitch was his eyes, his gaze so loving and so real that he felt it like a breathy kiss and embrace.

 

“You will be okay, Mitch. This is the hardest part. This is the part where you are pushing for things you don’t know can exist yet. This is the part where you push for a better life without knowing what that life it. The one before seems better because it’s the only one you know. Now you have to hold on and trust us blindly.”

 

Trust is hard when you don’t trust yourself—when you’re told not to trust yourself.

 

“Holding on to hope is how you got to where you are now, Mitch: hockey, friendship, love. Now you just need to do it again.”

 

The first time he tried to swallow all his pills at once. They caught in his throat, and he choked them back up in a sticky, pasty mess of dissolving powders and capsules.

 

The second time, he swallowed them one at a time, and he accepted the need for each one.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things don’t go away just because you want them to. 
> 
>  
> 
> I’ve been conscious of my diagnosis for about five years. It’s been extremely hard to accept. I couldn’t hate myself anymore than I did at that time, but even now, doing as well as I am, I still feel it’s weight. It’s hard to explain this thought process. This unlinear, delusional thought pattern that leads to trying to rid myself of all these issues by allowing it to take my life back over.
> 
>  
> 
> The hardest part in recovery for me, had always been knowing that I will be stuck with these issues no matter what I do and having no basis of understand of what this life I’m supposed to be working for is like. Each year it gets better though. It really does. 
> 
>  
> 
> I know it’s a really, extraordinarily common issues for people with bipolar disorder to stop taking meds in hope of finding the them that feels right. I’ve tried so many times. I can’t find it in either state. Might as well take the one where I don’t kill myself and cause my loved ones unnecessary pain. (Hint: that’s the option where I take my meds.) 


End file.
